Many people are a bit confused about the concept of domain parking and they get even more puzzled when they hear that one can actually make money parking domains.
Domain parking basically refers to the registration of an Internet domain name not including that domain being associated with any services such as e-mail or a website.
In general, there should be nothing there, but most if not all domain registrars will insert advertisements to a parked domain. A small fee as a reward for allowing your domain to host said advertising will go to you if these adverts are clicked. So, in conclusion, the domain is on the whole turned into an online billboard. With the right arrangement, setup and investment, it’s probable to turn a sensible profit from parked domains. Plus they require little to no work once set up and it has the potential for true passive income.
Quantity first!
If you’re eager to look into domain parking as an income source, the first thing you will need to know is that for this technique, quantity is just as important, if not more so, than quality.
This is because like with most advertisements on the internet, the more traffic you have the more chance you have of generating the all-important clicks, so the more domains you have parked, the higher the possibility of getting some that have a high traffic flow.
It’s quite common for someone involved in domain parking to manage hundreds of domains. In fact, some services require having a minimum of 500 domains!
Domain selection criteria
The most vital thing about choosing a domain is to find those domains that can produce traffic without input from you. This is because all the domain parking services contain rules that prevent you from sending traffic to the sites via SEO, PPC etc. In fact, they can be quite merciless when it comes to traffic monitoring and if it looks like you’re trying to game the system they will suspend or close your account.
When choosing domains to use for parking, there are 3 broad types, namely brand new, misspelled, and expired domains.
- Brand new domains. This type of domain refers to new domains that are spelled correctly but may offer a potential for traffic. In general, these should be avoided or at least examined in detail to make sure they are worth the purchase, though at approx. $10 for a domain, it occasionally values the risk.
- Misspelled domains. This type of domain is one where you get a domain similar to another in the hopes that people will type in the incorrect domain name and end up on your site instead. The most common way to do this is to look for plurals, e.g. instead of bluewidget.com, register bluewidgets.com. There are some legal areas that you may struggle with here, especially if you start abusing brand names and copyrights this way, but it does offer the chance to seize traffic from popular sites.
- Expired domains. It is a safer alternative is to pick up domains that have expired. These types of domains usually have had some traffic in the past that you can leverage.
It’s worth running any domain through a site that can supply more info on the domain such as Alexa for estimated traffic and Majestic for a more detailed report.
Basically, you’re just trying to make sure you’re not purchasing a site that only had 3 visitors per year, as you won’t make a cent that way. If you’ve ever examined a domain to buy or one for a PBN, then it’s basically the same criteria.
In general, the domain that you can consider to buy should be .coms or .orgs and should focus on a popular niche. This would be the one time where you should even think broader niches than you are perhaps used to with affiliate marketing, though as with anything online testing will be required.
Domain parking requires a lot of forethought and assessment of a niche, from the keywords used to the general market, as well as potential traffic as everything focuses merely on the domain name itself as you have no other way to promote the domain.
In order to get adverts to emerge on your site, you will need to use a domain parking service. Most domain registrars such as GoDaddy and Sedo offer domain parking services. There are also companies that exclusively focus on domain parking such as NameDrive and Redirect. Redirect is actually quite an interesting one as instead of serving adverts, it geolocates the visitor and redirects them to a targeted advertiser.